





w 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 385 671 9 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH8.5 



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Class 

Book. 



DOBELL COLLECTION 



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MY POEMS, 



MY POEMS, 

AN 

INSTRUCTIVE AND ENTERTAINING 

MISCELLANY 

OF 

TALES, TRANSLATIONS, REFLECTIONS, THOUGHTS, 
SIMILES, SENTIMENTS, 

AND A VARIETY OF 

SERIOUS, COMIC, HUMOROUS, AND OTHER 

LUDICROUS PIECES, IN A STYLE 

NEW AND ORIGINAL. 



For jl will, for no man's pleasure 

Change a syllable or measure, 

Pedants shall not tie my strains 

To our antique Poet's veins, 

Being born as free as these, 

I will sing as I shall please. Wither! afudSoutky. 



BY ME. 

CUT OF MY APPRENTICESHIP. 



I to the muses have been bound, 

These fourteen years by strong indentures. Lyrical Balladsi 

Come for ye know me, listen to my lay. MadoC. 



WITH A 

Prefatory essap ^ntitteb, 
THE COMPLETE ART OF VERSIFICATION, 

OR 

EVERY MAN HIS OWN 



And those who cannot write and those who can 

Shall rhyme and scrawl and scribble to a man. Pcpt 



CALCUTTA: 

1812, 






205449 
.'13 



SKETCH OF AN ESSAY, 



ESTITLEB 



THE COMPLETE ART OF VERSIFICATION; 



OR 



every man his own 

JPOjET. 



CONSIDERING the vast utility of Poetry to Man- 
kind, which like music, " softens Rocks and bends 
the rugged Oak," and considering, the injury this 
valuable art ha& sustained, from the pretensions of 
Persons to its possession, who have no pretentions at 
all ; I have been induced to plan and digest and 
digest a plan, by which every man may be a Poet, 
and yet Poetry shall lose none of its present value ; as 
folio weth. 

Poetry, according to the practice of the most able 
modern Professors, contains but two things, Rhythm 



[ ii ] 

and Rhyme : — Rhythm, for the benefit of my unlearn- 
ed Pleaders, I shall call Measure ; and of Measure, 
therefore I proceed to treat. 

Now Measure as an attribute is threefold, of capa- 
city, of weight and of space ; we have nothing to do 
with capacity in the present instance, and as to weight 
the lighter that verses are the better ; we therefore 
come to space, and here occurs the first difficulty. 

It has been usual for young Poets to find out the 
length of Verses by their feet ; rather a mistake by the 
bye, as it should have been, by their fingers ; but 
this is troublesome to the most dexterous hands, and 
besides every body's fingers are not limber enough, to 
finger this harpsicord of the muses ; what I propose 
therefore is this. 

I have ascertained by my Compasses, the lengths of 
various decasyllabic, hendecasyllabic, dodecasyllabic, 
&c. &c. lines, according to the custom of the best 
Poets ; and of each of these I have made out the aver- 



[ iii ] 

age inches ) as per the adjoined scaler according to 
this scale let any body therefrre draw two lines 
down his page, one to the left, the other to the right, at 
the proper distance; and he will be a perfect master, 
a very Taylor, in the art of measuring. 

We now come to the Rhyme, the most important 
part of the whole; for let me ask, what Poet ever 
gave up Rhyme for Sense, or did not give up Sense 
for Rhyme ? But this is to digress. We are to sup- 
ply Rhimes for our Poet; let him take up any set of 
Verses he pleases, and copy the last word of each 
line as he finds them, putting them next the right 
hand delineated line, which I have before mentioned, 
and both difficulties are discussed. He may now pre- 
fix any wrrds he pleases, to his Rhyming particle ; 
and he has written excellent Verses : specimens of the 
mode follow my scale. 

Before I conclude, I may perhaps doubt, whether 
the moderns have not gone beyond me, by putting 
lines of all lengths together, higgledy piggledy like 



[ iv ] 

a carps of recruits at the first muster, and scattreing 
Rhymes here and there at random, like the shots of a 
bad marksman, amongst a covey of Partridges*. how* 
ever I am one of the old school, J wish to have some** 
thing at least amongst my Verses, I can give up reason^ 
as well as they ; but I must stickle for Rhyme. For 
those who may prefer being in fashion, I have a set of 
dice^ particularly marked, which they may throw for 
each line, and so discover the number of inches, it 
will be proper to fill up. P. P. 

The graduated scale and specimens of Versification 
will appear in the regular Publication, 



SELECT SPECIMENS 



fro:.i 



MY FOEMi 



AN IDEA. 



OBJECT divine of hearts and eyes, 
Prime manufacture of the skies, 
No earthly price can purchase thee. 
Except the verse — that's bid by me, 



A SENTIMENT. 



Trust not the world — -its promises you'll find, 

Are nought but words & words are nought but wind. 



A DOUBT. 

That others may have lit the fire 
Of ardent love and hot desire, 
I may perhaps suppose, 
But I must needs conceive amaze 
How you can teach a fire to blaze, 
By shedding on it — snows. 



[ 2 ] 
A THOUGHT. 



She flies me and I'm all alone. 

Amidst this bustling crowd ; 

I seek the shade and there my moan 

Makes silence seem aloud — 

Thus can a solitude a city be, 

And thus a crowd 9 s a solitude to me. 



tJHANSON. 



This Anne so fair 

Who claims my song, 

Why comes she not, I must declare, 

This lovely Anne is wrong. 

My sighs and air 

To grief belong, 

Why comes she not, I must declare, 

This lovely Anne is wrong. 

How shall I bear, 

My grief so strong : 

She comes not, IH1 e'en seek my fair; 

Which is not very wrong. 



[ 3 ] 

PASSION. 

Spring from your sockets now unuseful sight, 
Leave eyes bedimmed — this* devil of a head: 
Those charms have shed upon your orbits night. 
On you — on life—I am not blind— I'm dead. 



THE RETORT COURTEOUS. 

I gazed and gazed and fondly wildly cried, 
Whence comes the eloquence of those bright eyes ; 
It is not Nature's — nature quick replied— 
I gave the soul — and so your worship lies— 



A FANTASY. 



Lucinda frowning aimed an icy dart, 
To freeze those flames, that set on hre my heart 5 
They meet, when lo ! dissolved the ice appears, 
And all the water gushes forth in tears. 



THE POET TO LOYE DECEASED. 

Light of my life, my latest spark 
Now o'er thy grave stone flashes — 
And how much heat I owed thee mark, 
By gazing on my ashes. 

* This is not merely the idiomatical expression, but a delicate 
allusion, to the last invented whirligig play thing, for grown up 
young ladies. 



C 4 ] 

THE 

COOKMAIB* 

A REVERIE. 

See the ancient Mariner^ Queen Qrrila^ the host of 
Kings j Alice Brandy &;c &;c>fer other instances 
of the Simple- Sublime.. 



I. 

JlT is a worthy Cookmaid, 
Who sits by the fire alone, 
And all the ear, can possibly hear $ 
Is her nose's mourning tone. 

But fast as a church, though she seems to be, 

She does not sleep a wink, 

For she is frightened out of her life, 

She does not sleep a wink. 

Thrice three times three at evening fall, 

Strange noises at the door; 

Have rung their call, through the lonely hall, 

Where foot is heard bo more. ,■ 



[ 3 ] 

For from the dull and dusty town, 
Are the master and mistress scone, 
And there is none but the Cookmaid, 
Left in the house alone. 

And every night 9 to her great fright, 
Though not afraid before. 

She hears the tap— come rap rap rap, 
Thrice at the street dooiv- 



II. 



Fainter and fainter sound the wheels. 
And the hurly burly is over, 

And Margery, by the fire side, 
Is snoring away in clover. 

And before her eyes, there seem to rise, 
Visions quite pleasing and pat, 
Gravies, and stews, and sops in the pan, 
And she floats in an ether of fat. 

When from her dream, she woke with a scream. 

And up she jumped in a flurry, 

For a knocking so loud, there was at the door. 

That she ran to it in a hurry. 



[ 6 ] 

For is it a letter, or is it a friend, 
Or is it her swain bewitching; 
The youth who vows, he will espouse, 
This goddess of the kitchen. 

But nor friend, nor letter, nor swain, was there. 
Nor ever seemed to have been:, 
And not a soul could Margery see, 
Because, there was none to be seem. 



III. 

Another night 'twas just the same, 

Another night the knocking came, 

But nothing still appeared, 

And it seemed that the knocker knocked of itself, 

And Margery was afeared. 

And she fell away, and the folks did say. 
Lo neighbours only look ! 
Though late so fat, as lean as a cat, 
Is now poor mistress Cook. 






IV. 

The swain who basked in Margery's eyes, 
Was a cobler stout and tall, 
And at night 'twas his to pace the streets. 
And the waning hours to call. 



I r ] 

And much did he mourn his Margery, 

That she should be so slim. 

And gave sigh for sigh, and cry for cry, 

When she told her griefs to him. 

And full of chivalrous emprize, 

In ambuscade he snugly lies, 

With staff and lanthorn to explore, 

The cause of ^all this rumpus at the door. 

Alone, alone, all all alone, 
All alone by himself, watched he, 
So lone indeed, that he himself, 
Did scarce seem there to be. 

And he watched on, till it grew dark and late, 

And the chimes had sounded half past eight, 

And who shall say, the youth's dismay, 

When the fearful sounds began, 

But resolved to be bold, 

He sprang from his hold, 

And some vagabond boys, 

Who had made all the noise, 

As fast as they could from him ran, 



FIN I S. 



TO 'BE IN THE PRESS, 



BY THE 



AUTHOR 



OF 



MY POEMS. 



Audax omnia perpeti. 



1. xjlN authentic History of the Ages before the 

Flood, with Remarks on the manners of the 

People, and an extensive Vocabulary of their 

Language, founded on Cuthite Documents: 

6 Vols. Imperial Folio, Price Sa. Rs. 1000 

2. A History of English Poetry, with Poetical Illus- 
' trations, plainly shewing that if the Ancient 

Poets were full of conceits, the Modern Ones 
are no less conceited. 

2 Vols* Octavo, Sa. Rs. 50 

3. Au Essay on War intended to promote Peace. 

A Pamphlet, Sa. Rs. 8 



4. Critiques on French Bulletins, calculated to Illu* 
strate the True Sublime. 

15 Vols. Deudecimo, Sa. Rs. 96 

N 5. A Dissertation on real Valour, Elucidated by 
British Specimens. 

N. B. A great number of Volumes of this work are prepared, but 
^a larger number is in preparation; tlie Price consequently is above 
estimate. 

Royal Octavo, 

6. Paper, Wealth, an ingenious paradox. 

A Pamphlet, Annas. 8 

7. Oriental Literature a substitute for the Classics, 1 

plainly proved by extensive and interesting Ex* 
tracts from the former. 

1 Vol. Octodecimo, Sa. Rs. 1 

8. The Poetry of Eastern Mythology constituting 

the whole of it. 

1 Vol. size and value not yet ascertained. 

Besides a number of Projections, Plans, &c. for 

ameliorating the World and perfecticising Human 

Nature. 

PEREGRINE PEDANT, 

Laureat to the Muses, Honorary Member of all 

the Learned Societies, Diplom,atized Doctor of the 

German Universities and E, C. R* S, N* 0» W* H* 

L, A, 0. 1. 



LIBRARY OF 



CONGRESS 




014 385 671 9 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 385 671 9 




Hollinger Corp. 
P H8.5 



